© Copyright 2000 State University of New York & Ulster County Community CollegeInformation Anxiety
Richard Saul Wurman, in his book INFORMATION ANXIETY, helps us get a feel for just how dramatic the information explosion really is:
A weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England. (Wurman 32)This is not to mention the relentlessly dramatic expansion of electronic information on the Internet, which is probably doubling the production of information every four years.More new information has been produced in the last 30 years than in the previous 5,000. About 1,000 books are published internationally every day, and the total of all printed knowledge doubles every eight years. (qtd. in Wurman 35)
In one year the average American will read or complete 3,000 notices and forms, read 100 newspapers and 36 magazines, watch 2,463 hours of television, listen to 730 hours of radio, buy 20 CDs, talk on the telephone almost 61 hours, read 3 books, and spend countless hours exchanging information in conversations. (qtd. in Wurman 203)
